heavy sarcasm, holding hands, kitchen filled with the scent of cookies
by blenderfullasarcasm
Summary: Baking cookies had to be less dangerous than a case, right?


"Ayumi-chan, don't - never mind, too late." Conan sighed as the six-year-old enthusiastically dumped half a bag of flour on to the table. "I meant sprinkle maybe a handful on top, not that much…"

He turned back to the counter and blinked. "No, Genta-kun, don't eat that - !" He'd looked away for a whole _second_.

"What? Why not?" Genta asked petulantly, tongue a moment away from licking the raw cookie dough from his fingers.

Conan pinched the bridge of his nose and counted to ten. "One, it's unhygienic. How would you feel if Ayumi-chan licked your food? Because that's what you're doing right now. Two, and I cannot stress this enough, uncooked flour and egg white are bad for you, and not the way that candy is 'bad for you,'" he added, because he could see the argument forming. "This is more like the guy that we saw get poisoned last week. Remember him? He _died_. Do you want to get salmonella and die, Genta-kun?" Well, that was probably a little harsh - salmonella probably wouldn't kill him even if he ate all the dough they'd made so far - but if he didn't drill this into Genta's head he would never learn and also probably end up eating half of the cookie dough.

Genta slowly pulled his tongue back into his mouth. "Oh."

"Yeah, _oh_. Besides, it won't taste good until the sugar's been mixed in and it's been baked."

Which was a complete _lie_, except for the part about the sugar, but whatever. What were their parents teaching them if they didn't already know that? Even his parents, the ones who had been off travelling since the moment they could legally leave him to fend for himself, had taught him that much.

Hm. Actually, that was probably the reason behind them teaching him how to cook semi-competently (read: without killing himself accidentally), though he hadn't been capable of making things that actually tasted anything more than palatable until he moved into the Detective Agency with Ran and her father and watched how she cooked.

"Edogawa-kun - " He turned slightly to face the speaker at the sound of his name, assuming that Genta could probably wash his hands on his own. " - you should really try acting your age." Haibara had tied her hair back in a tiny ponytail somehow, despite the fact that her hair didn't even reach her shoulders, which made no logical sense - but, then again, he was half-convinced that physics just didn't apply to Haibara on principle.

Conan snorted. "If I did, this would be even more of a mess - wait, stop. Haibara, that's _salt_."

Luckily, he'd managed to stop her before she poured three cups into the mix, otherwise he would've had to go through this entire process again and he just _did not have the patience for that._ Disarming a bomb? Sure, easy. Murderer on the loose? No problem. The kids trying to bake cookies in the professor's kitchen? Once in a lifetime was plenty, thanks. He was _never _volunteering for this again.

"How on earth do you call yourself a chemist if you don't check the components before mixing them," he muttered under his breath, not intending her to hear but also not really making much of an effort to prevent it.

She shot him a poisonous glare. "Oh, I'm truly sorry, Edogawa-kun," she replied, voice dripping with sarcasm. "Please, do remind me exactly who is staying up half the night to find a cure to your...condition?"

Conan, deciding rather prudently to choose his battles, shoved a bag of sugar in her direction and rapidly absconded from the situation. Hearing a soft chuckle from the corner of the room, he turned to glare at Subaru, who was ostensibly their 'adult supervision' while Agasa was off tinkering in the backyard with his newest invention, but who was more focused on his laptop than the elementary schoolers using potentially dangerous appliances in the kitchen. Supposedly, he was working on his thesis. Conan had his doubts about that, though. And really, he was _terrible _at supervising kids.

"Is everything alright?" the supposed supervisor asked, pushing up his glasses to hide his mirth.

"Just _peachy_," Conan replied, even as the smell of something burning behind him reached his nose. He groaned, turning his back on Subaru. "Mitsuhiko-kun, please tell me you checked the oven was empty before you turned it on?"

A blush and shuffling feet told him no.

He sighed again, reaching for the oven mitts with one hand while the other opened the oven. His glasses fogged up momentarily at the temperature change, and when they cleared he discovered that the culprit appeared to be a sheet of aluminium foil. He used the oven mitt to pull it out of the oven and tossed it quickly into the sink before the heat could seep through to his hand. Mitsuhiko, making up for his earlier misjudgment, immediately turned on the tap water to stop it from smoking. Conan closed the oven again, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his free hand.

"Is everyone still alive?" he asked, half expecting someone to suddenly keel over, but (miracle of miracles) he got nods from all five of the others. Which was great, until somehow Ayumi managed to slip off the stool she was standing on to make her tall enough to reach the table where they were about to roll out the cookie dough. Conan, the nearest person, barely managed to awkwardly catch her hands in his, so that her feet were just barely keeping her anchored to the stool. He took a couple slow steps backwards, slowly dragging her center of gravity forward again so she could return to standing upright.

Conan sighed, resisting the urge to rake his fingers through his hair because he didn't want to have to wash his hands again. "Okay, guys. We're going to try aiming for less than _two _near-death experiences and only _minimal _maiming today."

Honestly, he'd thought an afternoon in baking cookies would be _less _dangerous than running after murderers, but evidently he'd been very wrong about that.


End file.
